Alone: A Fire Lookout's Story
by Jessafternoon
Summary: An original. A young man's coming of age story. Samuel's vision is too poor to be drafted to fight in WWII so he finds himself as a fire lookout, alone in the mountains instead.


One evening just before summer arrived in that year of the crash and the vagrants, the rain began. It started as all rain did, slapping loudly against the tin roof of the farm house, but it quickly became something more than a normal shower. The windows began to shake in their frames and the rain fell in sheets, each wave discernible and seemingly larger than the last. The cows made sounds like screams from their barn, but Samuel's mother assured him that they were fine.

"That barn is strong and new. Nothing to worry about. It'll take a lot more than a storm to bring it down."

"What about the other barn?"

Samuel's mother didn't respond, but only looked out the window and kept her knitting needles moving, clacking and clacking. The answer was obvious in her silence. It was not prepared to stand up to anything like this storm. As if in answer to the question that hung in the air, Tom Meller appeared at the foot of the stairs, pulling on a heavy, hooded coat. He was already wearing his thick boots.

"Your father will take care of things," Mrs. Meller said, her faux calm not quite convincing enough for an eleven year old.

"I need Samuel with me."

"Out of the question. Why just this after-"

"Blynne, I need him. It's for my own safety and the others. I'll keep him close, but we need a young pair of eyes. Come on, Samuel. Get on your boots and your coat and hurry."

Samuel dressed more quickly than he ever had in his life. This was a moment of excitement at last. The farm so rarely gave him anything to get excited about, but here his moment had come. His father spoke to him as Samuel pulled on his boots and began to lace them.

"You're gonna be our spotter. If you see anything we need to know about, you shout and you shout loud."

"What am I looking for?"

"Anything that might cause loss of life or limb. This wind will take that barn to the ground if we don't brace it."

For a moment only, Samuel allowed the horrible possibility of the barn's collapse to interrupt his excitement. Any men huddled inside would surely die. An image of a corncob pipe rolling through a puddle crossed his mind and disappeared just as quickly as it had come.

"Come on, Samuel. We have to go."

When Samuel and his father got to the old barn, the men were already roused, soaked to their bones in whatever clothes they had mustered to battle the elements. Eddard Morley, pipe unlit but clutched between his teeth as a unit of power, approached Tom Meller, bracing himself as he walked against the wind.

"We need to brace it."

"I felled a number of trees for the lofts in the new barn a few months ago. Quarter mile into the south wood They'll answer if we can manage in time."

Without removing the pipe from his mouth, Eddard Morley whistled through his teeth so that Samuel's ears ached. The vagrant men rallied to him, walking slowly through the pounding rain, looking for all the world like men possessed of an evil spirit. Samuel was to always be at hand, but out of the way. As a group of the men tramped into the woods, Samuel followed from twenty feet East. He had initially thought to stay behind with the men who were watching the barn, but his father stopped him.

"No, Samuel. With us. You can do nothing to help back there."

The trees Tom Meller had felled were exactly where he had left them. There had been little rain up to this point, and they looked as if they had not truly rotted yet. That would be crucial. The job of de-branching the felled trees had never been finished, as they had not in the end become necessary for the lofts, but it provided the men with some handles to hold. It took ten men to pull the massive trees through the woods, all of the detritus on the forest floor and the rapidly forming puddles doing no favors to their work. All in all, four trees began to slowly make their way back towards the farmland and the old barn, as long as it was still standing. The rain pounded all the while, never slowing or letting up for even a moment. The wind was so fierce at moments that Samuel was forced to hold onto a nearby tree to keep himself upright. The men dragging the trees had no such respite. Samuel noticed that many of them in the front of the line had their eyes closed, not even looking where they were going. Their bodies were bent forward, trusting to other senses that the job would be completed. In the middle of the largest tree was Eddard Morley. Samuel observed him from the distance of twenty to thirty feet. His pipe was resolutely clenched in his mouth, and his eyes were wide open against the lashing rain. They were a remarkably light blue and had the mark of cataracts that Samuel was too young to yet recognize. He was one of the few vagrants who had any heavy coat. The ill-suited wool was buttoned up to his chin. As the men struggled, and Samuel followed along, his eyes peeled for any sign of danger greater than the obvious. At one point, he believed that it had begun to hail, but it was only a cacophony of leaves being forced from their branches by the sheer power of the rain. It was disorienting, the dark green flatness of the leaves falling in his face along with the continued pounding of the rain. It was unlike anything Samuel had experienced before. He was nine years old, invincible, and living a moment he would remember forever. There wasn't likely to be another moment like this on the farm any time soon. He would need to remember this when things got particularly boring.

It was when the men had crossed the threshold from the south woods and back onto flat ground that things really began to get dicy. The ground had so deteriorated in their relatively brief absence, that every step brought the slipping of several men, and the trees themselves were soon coated in mud and thrice as heavy as they had once been. It was truly slow-going across a short span of ground that Samuel could have walked across in a few short seconds. Eventually, the men dropped the trees in place, two on each side of the barn, which miraculously still stood. It was being pushed about by the wind and the sounds of the old boards creaking were violent and jarring to the ear. Some men who had been dragging the trees near collapsed in exhaustion. Those who had stayed behind took their place as they began to move the trees into place so that they could prop them against the barn. Samuel could see but not hear his father, who was shouting at a group of men to follow him. They soon returned with shovels and began to attempt to make some kind of dent in which the trees could rest. Their shovels brought up nothing but water for a long time, but eventually they must have struck something like ground, as they began to furiously wave their arms for the others to hurry. The diggers hurried to the other side of the barn to make room for another brace. Samuel watched as the men nearest to him heaved the first tree into place. It looked to him as they finished that the tree had fallen into the barn gently, and was resting just beneath the roof in a moment of unusual serendipity. It did not at all appear as if it had been the work of a great struggle to get the tree to rest thus.

On the other side of the barn, something was wrong. Samuel saw a tree fall into sight and he ran to see what had happened. It was immediately clear that the hole had not been deep enough, the the tree had slipped, falling onto its side. Tom Meller and others were frantically picking the tree up again. Samuel saw, as the tree was brought airborne again, one man had stopped working. He was standing alone in the rain looking at where the tree had fallen. Samuel followed his line of sight and saw why the man froze so. There was a mangled body, only barely visible from the puddle in which it had fallen, been crushed into, but it was unmistakable and unmoving. A few other men paused to look, but there was nothing to be done right that moment. The man was gone. Samuel felt himself getting hot, despite the cold rain, and he felt his head begin to rise from his neck. In his shock, he was unable to recognize that he was about to vomit, and he retched down his coat front, standing still, taken by surprise by his own body. Again and again he retched, until his body only heaved and convulsed, producing nothing with the process.

He looked up, dazed and weak, and saw Eddard Morley looking at him. Two of the three trees were in place, and the barn was looking steadier against the lashing wind. Eddard took his pipe out of his mouth and tucked it into his coat pocket. He took a step towards Samuel. It all went black for the young boy.


End file.
